THE CHANGING FACE OF GIRLS SPORTS : A Generation in Transition: The Day of Just Play Has Found a New Way

Even though we lost every playday, GAA Badminton was a blast! We all had fun while learning a great deal. ----Entry in Fullerton High GAA scrapbook, circa 1963

Once upon a time, not long ago or far away, there was one ginger snap of an organization called the Girls’ Athletic Assn. Its purpose--to promote fun and recreation. Its methods--genteel.

Everyone played. Put the emphasis on played. Competition wasn’t a bad word, but by today’s standards, it was an unknown quantity. Fun, sportsmanship and friendship mattered most.

Girls didn’t compete in games, they participated in “playdays” with other schools. Punch and cookies were served after play was done.

Looking back from the peak where girls’ athletics now resides it seems pretty comical. Those who were there talk about it in the same embarrassed tone they would recall a bouffant hairdo or a Nehru jacket.

“GAA? Oh geez, we’ve come a long way since GAA,” said Vernie Ford, Fullerton girls’ basketball coach who coached GAA badminton, gymnastics and softball. “The main focus of GAA was participation. Actually it was a pretty good philosophy, but it was doomed to die.”

But we do not come here to bury GAA. That was done in the early 1970s when the California Interscholastic Federation finally offered championships for girls’ sports. It was done when a little piece of 1972 federal legislation called Title IX turned the academic sports world inside out. It was done when players such as Ann Meyers and, later, Cheryl Miller demonstrated there was nothing wrong with a woman who was ferociously dedicated to excellence in her chosen sport.

A new female athlete emerged in the 1970s, and today she is firmly entrenched. Unashamed of her competitiveness, mindful of the sacrifices needed to aspire and the college scholarships born out of that sacrifice.

There is no exact time, no exact place to pinpoint The Cause of all this. Discussing the evolution of girls’ high school athletics leaves a lot of references to chickens and eggs.

What came first?

Superior athletes or more qualified coaches? More aggressive athletes or increased opportunities? Better-conditioned athletes or better facilities?

The answer is yes.

“You can’t look at any one thing,” said Mark Trakh, Brea-Olinda basketball coach. “A lot of things happened, it was inevitable. The GAA and their methods were nice for their time but by 1980 they were dinosaurs. It was time for something new.”

Perhaps most significant, that something was coaching techniques brought to girls’ sports by male coaches such as Trakh. In their programs, recreation was replaced by structure and year-around commitments. Fitness encompassed weightlifting, friendship on the court and field was replaced by discipline and intensity.

Men weren’t the only ones using these methods successfully. Sheila Adams, Foothill basketball coach, has won Southern Section titles in much the same way, but men seemed to have an advantage. After all, they were reared in such programs.

“Things changed very quickly. Intensity, time spent with the athletes. There was no longer any room for people who were just babysitters,” said Joanne Kellogg, Huntington Beach basketball coach. “Men were at an advantage it that way, because most of them had a background in just those kind of programs.

“Their expertise was better because they had been brought up in competitive situations. Most girls came through GAA, which was pretty much punch and cookies.”

In the past 10 years the amount of coaching positions filled by men in Orange County high schools has increased remarkably. In 1976, of about 540 girls’ teams, 43 were coached by men. By the beginning of the 1986 school year, of about 600 girls’ teams, 261 were coached by men.

In Orange County, the majority of coaches for six girls’ sports--cross-country (40), track and field (37), swimming (35), soccer (31), basketball (30) and softball (29)--are men. The Southern Section sponsors 11 sports for girls.

As men have helped improve the quality of play, so too has the quality of people applying for girls’ jobs. Competition is many times fierce for a high-profile school.

“The way I chose a coach 10 years ago and today are really different,” said Ron Cozort, Valencia principal. “The competition is considerable and my methods are the same now as if I was choosing a new football coach.”

What also has fueled the competition is increased pay. In a 1977 Times’ poll, five years after Title IX, only two school districts, Irvine and Santa Ana, paid the girls’ coaches on the same scale as men. Today each of Orange County’s 15 school districts pays the same scale for boys’ and girls’ coaches.

So in came the men, with years of experience in their favor.

“I don’t think you can say men make better coaches,” said Oz Simmons, Dana Hills volleyball coach. “It’s just a matter of being brought up differently.”

Interestingly, it is for that difference that many men say they wish to remain in girls athletics.

“Everyone assumes you’re trying to get out as quick as you can, waiting for that one good boys’ job to come along,” said Marc Hill, Esperanza basketball coach. “But I think a lot of guys find the girls are much easier to coach. Or, I should say, much hungrier to be coached.”

Hungrier means that most girls don’t compare what their high school coach tells them with what Coach Johnson said during Little League or Coach Pillips said during Pop Warner.

“It’s hard to explain, but it just seems to be more rewarding,” Trakh said. “I’ve coached boys also. But with boys I always felt like just another coach. Girls seem to really care what you have to say.”

One reason girls care is the increased opportunities available.

Title IX provided that colleges had to offer similar amount of scholarships for women that they did for men. Girls were no longer playing solely for enjoyment. There was a goal, a very real and material goal, that could be attained.

“It took a while before the girls realized what Title IX meant to them,” Ford said. “It had a real trickle-down effect. Girls would see a person a class ahead get a scholarship and all of sudden they realized they could do that.”

They also realize they can coach. Most predict that it will be the high school classes of the 1980s that will eventually come back to replace most men. Some already have. Mickey McAulay took a no-where basketball program at Katella and had a 20-plus win season in 1986.

“I see more and more women like Mickey McAulay coming along,” Trakh said. “They’ll have had extreme competition in their backgrounds, they’ll know what structure is needed to be successful. It’s not a matter of coaching like a man. It’s just a matter of coaching to win. I’d say in 10 years, these kids we’re coaching today will take over.”